"We've come a long way baby." This was a slogan used by a cigarette company to sell cigarettes to women. I do agree with this sentiment. I think things have changed for the better for women in my lifetime. Sometimes, though, something comes along to remind how far we still need to go.
The latest travesty is a review in Newsweek for the new documentary on Roman Polanski's legal troubles. He was pled guilty of unlawful intercourse with a minor (a 13-year-old girl, he was 44 years old at the time). He fled the country before sentencing, and has been a fugitive ever since 1978. You can read about Polanski and his legal issues here.
More after the jump...after a word by our sponsors...
Feminisms is a series of weekly feminist diaries. My fellow feminists and I decided to start our own for several purposes: we wanted a place to chat with each other, we felt it was important to both share our own stories and learn from others’, and we hoped to introduce to the community a better understanding of what feminism is about.
Needless to say, we expect disagreements to arise. We have all had different experiences in life, so while we share the same labels, we don’t necessarily share the same definitions. Hopefully, we can all be patient and civil with each other, and remember that, ultimately, we’re all on the same side.
The documentary is called Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. The documentary is reviewed in Newsweek and it's infuriating. My issue is not with the documentary itself, which I haven't seen, but with the some statements in the review.
Polanski was at the top of his game in 1977, as director of the hugely successful "Chinatown." How his path crossed with Samantha is a classic story of Hollywood aspiration. Her mother, a pretty sometime actress, turned up at parties at Polanski's Malibu house; she agreed to allow her precocious daughter, eagerly launching her own modeling and acting career, to pose for photos Polanski was taking for Men's Vogue in France. He also shot Nastassja Kinski for a magazine—she became, at 15, his lover. That could have rung a warning bell—or signaled a potential career opportunity. The documentary depicts the encounter of Polanski and the victim with a queasy ambiguity. The pair went, with her mother's permission, to Jack Nicholson's Mulholland Drive house—the star was away—and Polanski photographed her topless, then in the Jacuzzi. There was champagne and a Quaalude for refreshments before a trip to the bedroom. When Samantha's mother found out, she called the police. Polanski never denied he'd had sex with her but maintained it was consensual. Samantha said it was not. She also told detectives she'd been drunk before. And she'd had sex before. Polanski was arrested the next day at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.
[Emphasis mine]
There's so many things wrong with this paragraph I don't even know where to begin. But seriously, is there really any ambiguity about consensual sex with a 13-year-old? And how about the depiction of the mother as putting her daughter in danger? What about the unnecessary details about the victim's sexual history? Have we really not advanced from the days that rape is because the the victim drank, went alone with a man or had sex before? Maybe it's the age of the victim that's really yanking my chain but this really pissed me off.
I don't have any opinion on the legal issues involved here - I'm not a lawyer and I haven't seen the documentary. I am happy that the victim has moved on with her life and that she agreed to tell her story. That doesn't give Newsweek the excuse to revert to the tired old victim-blaming, he-said, she-said type of coverage of sexual assault issues.